As much as I love the LOTR movies -- and I do -- the features on the extended editions are some of the best documentary filmmaking I've ever seen.

In the meantime, I love how informal this is. "Here's what we'll be doing for the next 2 or 3 years," with a grin. I love the things he showed and the things he teased, the perfect mix for the first entry in a 2 or 3 year diary. And I was bowled over when Ian just showed up unannounced - "wait! Was that him at the edge of the frame? Hey! It is!"

[Scott Roberts]"4 hours and 10 minutes for Return of the King Extended?"

I remember watching the theatrical cut in the (wait for it....) THEATER and thinking, wow, this is really long, and I have no idea what's going on. I'm not sure I'm up for the extended edition.

Of course at that point, no way was I going to not get the extended edition, for the two discs of making-of movies if nothing else. Lo and behold, the longer edition not only made sense, but in some ways is now my favorite of the the 3.

I could still have used ONE ending to the movie. I'm glad he didn't add any more of those.

Even more than the theater, I'm waiting for Blu-ray releases that fit the extended versions on a single disk....

The more I watch HD movies at home the less I want to go to the theater.
The main reason I do not go to the movies mroe often, aside from the obvious time factor, is that the people who think the theater and their living rooms are the same place ruin it for me.
Candy wrappers crinkling, straw slurping, ice rattling, popcorn crunching and smelling, coughing, throat clearing, text messaging and without fail, at R rated movies...wait for it...babies crying.

If not for those factors I would be there every week.

I have been holding out on buying a blu-ray player until the Star Wars Trilogy would be released - so it looks Like I will be getting one finally along with numerous blu-ray sets.

I did not see Fellowship in the theater, but once I saw it on DVD I made sure to see the other two in the theater. Return of the King was interrupted by a fire alarm, so it was closer to 4 hours than intended.

I still like the tribal aspect of seeing the best movies. It goes all the way back to sitting around fires. Stories told in the dark, all the way through, get to us now for the same reason they've been getting to us since before we could speak.

My wife and I waited in line for 2 hours for the midnight opening of the last Harry Potter movie...which was as tedious as you'd expect for two people in their 50s...and I'm pretty sure we got the LAST TWO seats together in the joint, but the roar that accompanied the LOGO appearing on screen, or the people calling out the name of the character who appeared by surprise...or at the end, a beat of dead silence before some kid yelled "OMG!!!" - seriously, the actual letters - and a bunch of people yelling "Nooooo!!!" made it more than worth everything else.

Being with a roomful of strangers bound only by the story was a kind of magic itself. We've already made plans to visit the relatives who live near a full-size IMAX theater to catch the opening midnight of the finale.

It helps to think of it as a sporting event. You set to record it before you go, because you're in the audience primarily to be in the audience. Mike, you're in Connecticut. If you haven't been to a Celtics play-off game, do, and you'll know what I mean. It's about THAT ROOM and THAT CROWD, and it costs a lot of money because it's worth a lot of money. But at any sporting event you attend, you know you're going to miss a bunch of details, so you watch the game at home too.

Likewise, the majority of movies I buy are ones that I also attended...which means I'm buying almost nothing these days. For the kind of movie that I used to go see a couple of times a week, I'm now relying on a combination of cable, Netflix, Redbox and Scott Roberts.

Which is to say, I think it will be more than worth your while to see Fellowship of the Rings in the theater. I'm not sure why the most intimate of the movies works the best on the big screen - maybe being IN the Shire, Rivendell, hiding beside the road when the Ringwraiths are overhead, and Galadriel's Caras Galadhon (dude, I SO had to look those up) are so enveloping. They really take you IN to the place.

The only other setting that did that for me in the other two movies was Edoras, the capital city of Rohan (which I also had to just look up. Revoke my nerd credentials now). I guess it's that I know how to look at spectacle. I've seen it before. But I'd never been to any of those places before.

You've been there, so the shock won't be quite as strong, but you'll be glad you experienced it.

Tim - You call attention to an important variation on the reason to go to the movies. I agree that what you get from the theater experience you don't get at home.

When I waited in line at midnight for Phantom Menace and the lights dimmed - the Fox logo with fanfare got a cheer. The "long time ago" got a big cheer. The STAR WARS logo appeared and it was pandemonium. The opening crawl could have lasted 5 minutes and everyone would have gone home happy. Actually it was also like that last year at Star Wars in Concert. Both times was a mostly over 30 crowd. There was a guy in my row at the concert who had to be in his 50's and he was jumping up and down as if it was his 8th birthday and he just got a new dirt bike/Atari 2600/whatever.

There was a moment during the encore of Imperial March where the I-Mag camera focused on the woman playing the triangle and as she hit the barely audible note people went nuts. Another thing you just don't get unless you are surrounded by like minded people.

You don't get too many movie experiences where the audience just goes bat$hit crazy bananas over the logo and title of the movie. That is definitely the reason to go to the theater.

When I recently saw Battle LA - yeah it was full of action and adventure - but there were 8 people in the theater, half of them could have been snoring. Not the same.

I'll go the LOTR at the theater just for this communal experience and I'll love it. Same for Harry Potter Part 12 and yes, Phantom Menace 3D which is to be first out of the gate in 2012.

My rant about the movie theater experience was about the run of the mill movie that does not have any sort of group experience associated with it.

I've experienced the good and bad of going to the movie theater quite a bit. Definitely more good than bad, or I probably wouldn't keep going back.

I don't go see a ton of kids movies in theaters, but I remember when I went to see Toy Story 3 (a film series that actually meant a lot to me from my childhood) I was forced to see it in a crowded theater, and while I normally dislike crowded theaters, there was a sense of electricity in the air during (especially) the end action sequence. And there was a roar and applause from the crowd that actually hit my emotions harder than I thought it would. Probably wouldn't have happened if I had seen it by myself. Same goes for something like when I saw The Dark Knight in IMAX opening day. The part when the Batcycle flips over the semi-truck and there are a few moments of silence while it's flipping over, the whole crowd sort of had a quiet "Whooooooaaaa" moment. Pretty cool. That kind of thing happens a lot in crowded theaters.

But I've aso sen the obvious bad stuff, for instance when I saw Snakes on a Plane opening Friday night. The level of jacka**ery reached monumental peaks. And even I rememeber I went to a midnight showing of LOTR: Return of the King, and by 3:30 AM, during the 2nd or 3rd ending, the meathead portion of the crowd who just wanted to see orcs getting cut up started to get annoyingly restless.

But that was for a monumental theatrical release at the time, and a special one-time showing of the three LOTR films probably won't cater to that many Johnny Keg-Stands. I think it will be fine.

But for the most part I like to go during the afternoon on Saturdays (and Sundays during NFL off-season), where it's usually just myself and maybe 10 other people. It keeps distractions to a minimum. When I watch movies at home, if I get slightly bored with it, or think of something else that I need to check, I will often go on my computer and multitask and head turn. At the theater, it's 100% commitment to the film (yes, even bad films), there's nothing else to do but watch the movie. There's something I really like about that.

[Scott Roberts]"it's usually just myself and maybe 10 other people. It keeps distractions to a minimum. When I watch movies at home, if I get slightly bored with it, or think of something else that I need to check, I will often go on my computer and multitask and head turn..."

See, that's what I think about empty theaters. I WANT my theater to be loud. There had to have been $25,000 worth of snacks in my one showing of Harry Potter, and I can say with certainty I didn't hear a single slurp or bucket of popcorn fall to the floor. If there's nobody else around, I usually mostly think about how much I want to leave the theater because I really COULD be watching at home.

This is one reason I believe that good TV trumps good movies every time. Using our recent example of The Killing, I didn't think it really hit its stride until hour 4...but I still hung through the first 3 because I saw the potential, even with the lights on and the phone ringing. Throw in Justified (still my favorite), Vampire Diaries (right behind, because I am in fact a teenage girl), the still-delivering House, and I think that the very best is actually on traditional 42-minutes of programming per hour TV.

We're getting further and further off topic from The Hobbit BTS clip of course....and I really am still very excited by it. But I guess this is going to be what it's like for the next 2 or 3 years. :-)

But I don't have a 70 foot screen at home with super surround sound! A LOT of movies lose their magic when they go from the movie theater to your TV. I don't think I've heard the argument for the other way around.

Plus it's also a way to do something lazy, but still get out of the house! :)

My opinion is that action movies, comedies, and certain nerd movies; the audience can be loud and fun, I don't mind, it does indeed add to the film. But dramas and/or films where sound/silence actually play a role; I'd still like to see it in a theater, but I don't want anyone in the theater to make a sound. A lady was constantly commenting in the row behind me during Black Swan, and I wanted to dump a soda on her head. I would have cared less if it were something like The Hangover.

Sure, I agree that it is great to see a film like a comedy with a big crowd. The laughter is contagious.

However, for me, when I'm watching a movie I really get into it and almost forget I'm in a theater. The second I see the light in the corner of my eye from a cell phone because someone is texting, I lose all concentration and focus on the shinny object. Then I need to re-focus on what is going on in the movie again. Maybe I have ADD but I don't want to be distracted during a movie. I don't need the guy sitting next to me in Inception to tell the world that that is her totem. Duh. I feel like leaning over and saying, "Save your stupid comments for the director/audience member commentary bonus feature on the DVD."

And yes, I've gotten a baby sitter to go to the movies to end up sitting next to a crying baby. Uhhrrr.

However, my favorite was the old man behind me at the movie Salt. Every time Salt flashed back to her husband in the movie the old guy behind me asked who that was. For those that have not seen the film...it was the same guy with a different shirt every time.

Movies have pacing and rhythm to them and those distractions take me out of the grove of the film.